1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to apparatus used to monitor and control the use of electricity in motors, lights, heaters, etc., and, more specifically, controls for spas, hot tubs and swimming pools.
2. Description of Related Art
Electronic controls for spas have been developed which give spa owners many features and conveniences. Unfortunately the difficulty in servicing these products, similar to the modern automobile, has also greatly increased. Even a skilled and experienced technician may have difficulty isolating a defective pump, heater, pressure switch, etc. without extensive testing of the individual components. This is mainly because these components are turned on and off according to a complicated software program in a microprocessor, which the service technician and spa owner may not understand.
Other spa controls, such as the one described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,253,227, Tompkins and Green, show certain error messages on a display that relate to certain system failures, i.e., xe2x80x9cFLOxe2x80x9d, which means lack of water flow. A service technician responding to a xe2x80x9cFLOxe2x80x9d message would usually have to devise his own scheme for relating this error message to a bad pump, filter element, plumbing blockage, control panel, power switching circuit board, fuse, or even the flow measuring device itself (usually a pressure switch). This is not an easy task and the technician, for his customer""s sake, will often just replace everything that he feels could contribute to such an error message.
The present invention is a major improvement over the previous attempts to provide error messages in that data is collected from various sensors for temperature, time, pressure, light, voltage, current, PH, ORP, etc. over a carefully controlled test cycle where components are turned on and off individually by a power switching means while certain measurements are made by various sensing means, the most important being a current sensor.
After all possible data has been collected from the spa is a first and second state of operation, special failure analysis logic is applied and each component is either validated or condemned as defective, based often on previous conclusions concerning other components. The final result then is a xe2x80x9creplacement recommendationxe2x80x9d that indicates which part or component needs repair or replacement.
The improvement of the present invention is to replace the aforementioned xe2x80x9cerror messagesxe2x80x9d with accurate xe2x80x9creplacement recommendationsxe2x80x9d which lead to action, rather than just status.